Manage your subscription

Snuff said

Published 9 May 2012

From
Byron Rigby

In CultureLab’s look at Immortality(7 April, p 47), both reviewer S. Jay Olshansky and author Stephen Cave appear to consider that the unit of survival is the individual. The battle against death is then the fight for individual survival, whether through health measures, life after death, immortality of the soul, or legacy.

What if the unit of survival is the community, or the species? We have already seen the resurrection of the concept of group selection, after all.

Many of us are happy to grow, spread our genetic and cognitive seed, then drop off the branch. We might not …